These inventions generally relate to optimally bringing the efficiencies of modern computing and networking to the administration and support of electronic interactions and consequences and further relate to a secure architecture enabling distributed, trusted administration for electronic commerce.
These inventions relate, in more detail, to a xe2x80x9cDistributed Commerce Utilityxe2x80x9dxe2x80x94a foundation for the administration and support of electronic commerce and other electronic interaction and relationship environments.
In still more detail, these inventions generally relate to:
efficient administration and support of electronic commerce and communications;
methods and technologies for electronic rights administration and support services;
techniques and arrangements for distributing administration and support services such as secure electronic transaction management/administration, electronic process control and automation, and clearing functions across and/or within an electronic network and/or virtual distribution environment; and/or p1 clearing, control, automation, and other administrative, infrastructure and support capabilities that collectively enable and support the operation of an efficient, secure, peer-to-peer collection of commerce participants within the human digital community.
Efficient, effective societies require capabilities enabling their inhabitants to control the nature and consequences of their participation in interactions. Every community needs certain basic services, facilities and installations:
the post office delivers our mail,
the schools teach our children,
the highway department keeps our roads passable and in good repair,
the fire department puts out fires,
the power company delivers electrical power to our homes,
the telephone company connects people and electronic devices near and far and provides directory services when you don""t know the right number,
banks keep our money safe,
cable TV and radio stations deliver news and entertainment programming to our homes.
police keep order,
the sanitation department collects refuse, and
social services support societal policies for the needy.
These and other important xe2x80x9cbehind the scenesxe2x80x9d administrative and support services provide an underlying base or foundation that makes the conveniences and necessities of modern life as we know it possible and efficient, and allow the wheels of commerce to spin smoothly.
Suppose you want to buy bread at the local bakery. The baker doesn""t have to do everything involved in making the bread because he can rely on support and administration services the community provides. For example:
The baker doesn""t need to grow or mill grain to make flour for the bread. Instead, he can purchase flour from a supplier that delivers it by truck.
Similarly, the baker doesn""t need to grow or produce fuel to keep its ovens hot; that fuel can be delivered in pipes or tanks by people who specialize in producing and supplying fuel.
You can also have confidence in the cleanliness of the local bakery because it displays an inspection notice certifying that it has been inspected by the local health department.
Support and administrative services are also very important to ensure that people are compensated for their efforts. For example:
You and the bakery can safely trust the government to stand behind the currency you take out of your wallet or purse to pay for the bread.
If you pay by check, the banking system debits the amount of your check from your bank account overnight and gives the bakery the money.
If you and the bakery use different banks, your check may be handled by an automated xe2x80x9cclearinghousexe2x80x9d system that allows different banks to exchange checks and settle accountsxe2x80x94efficiently transferring money between the banks and returning checks drawn on accounts that don""t have enough money in them.
If the bakery accepts credit cards as payment, the flexibility of payment methods accepted in exchange for the bakery products is increased and provides increased convenience and purchasing power to its customers.
Such support and administrative services provide great economies in terms of scale and scopexe2x80x94making our economy much more efficient. For example, these important support and administrative services allow the baker to concentrate on what he knows how to do bestxe2x80x94make and bake bread. It is much more efficient for a bakery and its experienced bakers to make many loaves of bread in its large commercial ovens than it is for individual families to each bake individual loaves in their own home ovens, or for the growers of grain to also bake the bread and pump the fuel needed for baking and accept barter, for example, chickens in exchange for the bread. As a result, you and the bakery can complete your purchasing transaction with a credit card because both you and the bakery have confidence that such a payment system works well and can be trusted to xe2x80x9cautomaticallyxe2x80x9d function as a highly efficient and convenient basis for non-cash transactions.
There is now a worldwide electronic community. Electronic community participants need the ability to shape, control, and, in an electronic world, automate, their interactions. They badly need reliable, secure, trusted support and administrative services.
More and more of the world""s commerce is being carried on electronically. The Internetxe2x80x94a massive electronic network of networks that connects millions of computers worldwidexe2x80x94is being used increasingly as the vehicle for commerce transactions. Fueled largely by easy-to-use interfaces (e.g., those allowing customers to xe2x80x9cpoint and clickxe2x80x9d on items to initiate purchase and then to complete a simple form to convey credit card information), the Internet is rapidly becoming a focal point for consumer and business to business purchases. It is also becoming a significant xe2x80x9cchannelxe2x80x9d for the sale and distribution of all kinds of electronic properties and services, including information, software, games, and entertainment.
At the same time, large companies use both private and public data networks to connect with their suppliers and customers. Driven by apparently inexorable declines in the cost of both computing power and network capacity, electronic commerce will increase in importance as the world becomes more and more computerized. This new electronic communityxe2x80x94with its widespread electronic commercexe2x80x94is generating great new demands for electronic administrative, support and xe2x80x9cclearingxe2x80x9d services.
The electronic community badly needs a foundation that will support both commercial and personal electronic interactions and relationships. Electronic commerce on any significant scale will require a dependable, efficient, scaleable, and secure network of third party support and administrative service providers and mechanisms to facilitate important parts of the transaction process. For example:
People who provide value to the electronic community require seamless and efficient mechanisms allowing them to be compensated for the value they provide.
Providers who sell goods or services to the electronic community need reliable, efficient electronic payment mechanisms to service themselves and other value chain participants.
Purchasers in the electronic marketplace, while often unaware of the behind-the-scenes intricacies of payment transaction activity, nonetheless require easy to use, efficient and flexible interfaces to payment mechanisms and financial obligation fulfillment systems.
Rights holders in all types of electronic xe2x80x9ccontentxe2x80x9d (for example, analog or digital information representing text, graphics, movies, animation, images, video, digital linear motion pictures, sound and sound recordings, still images, software computer programs, data), and to many types of electronic control processes, require secure, flexible and widely interoperable mechanisms for managing their rights and administering their business models, including collecting, when desired, payments and relevant usage information for various uses of their content.
All parties require infrastructure support services that remain dependable, trusted, and secure even as the volume of commerce transactions increases substantially.
An important cornerstone of successful electronic transaction management and commerce is therefore the development and operation of a set of administrative and support services that support these objectives and facilitate the emergence of more diverse, flexible, scaleable, and efficient business models for electronic commerce generally.
The above-referenced Ginter, et al. patent specification describes technology providing unique, powerful capabilities instrumental to the development of secure, distributed transaction-based electronic commerce and rights management. This technology can enable many important, new business models and business practices on the part of electronic commerce participants while also supporting existing business models and practices.
The Ginter et al. specification describes comprehensive overall systems and wide arrays of methods, techniques, structures and arrangements that enable secure, efficient distributed electronic commerce and rights management on the Internet (and Intranets), within companies large and small, in the living room, and in the home office. Such techniques, systems and arrangements bring about an unparalleled degree of security, reliability, efficiency and flexibility to electronic commerce and electronic rights management.
The Ginter, et al. patent specification also describes an xe2x80x9cInformation Utilityxe2x80x9dxe2x80x94a network of support and administrative services, facilities and installations that grease the wheels of electronic commerce and support electronic transactions in this new electronic community. For example, Ginter, et al. details a wide array of support and administrative service providers for interfacing with and supporting a secure xe2x80x9cVirtual Distribution Environment.xe2x80x9d These support and administrative service providers include:
transaction processors,
usage analysts,
report receivers,
report creators,
system administrators,
permissioning agents,
certification authority
content and message repositories,
financial clearinghouses,
consumer/author registration systems,
template libraries,
control structure libraries,
disbursement systems,
electronic funds transfer, credit card, paper billing systems, and
receipt, response, transaction and analysis audit systems.
The present inventions build on the fundamental concepts described in the Ginter, et al. patent specification while extending those inventions to provide further increases in efficiency, flexibility and capability. They provide an overlay of distributed electronic administrative and support services (the xe2x80x9cDistributed Commerce Utilityxe2x80x9d). They can, in their preferred embodiments, use and take advantage of the xe2x80x9cVirtual Distribution Environmentxe2x80x9d (and other capabilities described in the Ginter et al patent specification and may be layered on top of and expand on those capabilities.
The present inventions provide an integrated, modular array of administrative and support services for electronic commerce and electronic rights and transaction management. These administrative and support services supply a secure foundation for conducting financial management, rights management, certificate authority, rules clearing, usage clearing, secure directory services, and other transaction related capabilities functioning over a vast electronic network such as the Internet and/or over organization internal Intranets, or even in-home networks of electronic appliances.
These administrative and support services can be adapted to the specific needs of electronic commerce value chains. Electronic commerce participants can use these administrative and support services to support their interests, and can shape and reuse these services in response to competitive business realities.
The present inventions provide a xe2x80x9cDistributed Commerce Utilityxe2x80x9d having a secure, programmable, distributed architecture that provides administrative and support services. The Distributed Commerce Utility can make optimally efficient use of commerce administration resources, and can scale in a practical fashion to accommodate the demands of electronic commerce growth.
The Distributed Commerce Utility may comprise a number of Commerce Utility Systems. These Commerce Utility Systems provide a web of infrastructure support available to, and reusable by, the entire electronic community and/or many or all of its participants.
Different support functions can be collected together in hierarchical and/or in networked relationships to suit various business models and/or other objectives. Modular support functions can be combined in different arrays to form different Commerce Utility Systems for different design implementations and purposes. These Commerce Utility Systems can be distributed across a large number of electronic appliances with varying degrees of distribution. The comprehensive xe2x80x9cDistributed Commerce Utilityxe2x80x9d provided by the present invention:
Enables practical and efficient electronic commerce and rights management.
Provides services that securely administer and support electronic interactions and consequences.
Provides infrastructure for electronic commerce and other forms of human electronic interaction and relationships.
Optimally applies the efficiencies of modern distributed computing and networking.
Provides electronic automation and distributed processing.
Supports electronic commerce and communications infrastructure that is modular, programmable, distributed and optimally computerized.
Provides a comprehensive array of capabilities that can be combined to support services that perform various administrative and support roles.
Maximizes benefits from electronic automation and distributed processing to produce optimal allocation and use of resources across a system or network.
Is efficient, flexible, cost effective, configurable, reusable, modifiable, and generalizable.
Can economically reflect users"" business and privacy requirements.
Can optimally distribute processesxe2x80x94allowing commerce models to be flexible, scaled to demand and to match user requirements.
Can efficiently handle a full range of activities and service volumes.
Can be fashioned and operated for each business model, as a mixture of distributed and centralized processes.
Provides a blend of local, centralized and networked capabilities that can be uniquely shaped and reshaped to meet changing conditions.
Supports general purpose resources and is reusable for many different models; in place infrastructure can be reused by different value chains having different requirements.
Can support any number of commerce and communications models.
Efficiently applies local, centralized and networked resources to match each value chain""s requirements.
Sharing of common resources spreads out costs and maximizes efficiency.
Supports mixed, distributed, peer-to-peer and centralized networked capabilities.
Can operate locally, remotely and/or centrally.
Can operate synchronously, asynchronously, or support both modes of operation.
Adapts easily and flexibly to the rapidly changing sea of commercial opportunities, relationships and constraints of xe2x80x9cCyberspace.xe2x80x9d
In sum, the Distributed Commerce Utility provides comprehensive, integrated administrative and support services for secure electronic commerce and other forms of electronic interaction.
Some of the advantageous features and characteristics of the Distributed Commerce Utility provided by the present inventions include the following:
The Distributed Commerce Utility supports programmable, distributed, and optimally computerized commerce and communications administration. It uniquely provides an array of services that perform various administrative and support rolesxe2x80x94providing the administrative overlay necessary for realizing maximum benefits from electronic automation, distributed processing, and system (e.g., network) wide optimal resource utilization.
The Distributed Commerce Utility is particularly adapted to provide the administrative foundation for the Internet, organization Intranets, and similar environments involving distributed digital information creators, users, and service systems.
The Distributed Commerce Utility architecture provides an efficient, cost effective, flexible, configurable, reusable, and generalizable foundation for electronic commerce and communications administrative and support services. Providing these capabilities is critical to establishing a foundation for human electronic interaction that supports optimal electronic relationship modelsxe2x80x94both commercial and personal.
The Distributed Commerce Utility architecture provides an electronic commerce and communication support services foundation that can be, for any specific model, fashioned and operated as a mixture of distributed and centralized processes.
The Distributed Commerce Utility supported models can be uniquely shaped and reshaped to progressively reflect optimal blends of local, centralized, and networked Distributed Commerce Utility administrative capabilities.
The Distributed Commerce Utility""s innovative electronic administrative capabilities support mixed, distributed, peer-to-peer and centralized networked capabilities. Collections of these capabilities, can each operate in any mixture of local, remote, and central asynchronous and/or synchronous networked combinations that together comprise the most commercially implementable, economic, and marketablexe2x80x94that is commercially desirablexe2x80x94model for a given purpose at any given time.
The Distributed Commerce Utility architecture is general purpose. It can support any number of commerce and communication models which share (e.g., reuse), as appropriate, local, centralized, and networked resources. As a result, the Distributed Commerce Utility optimally enables practical and efficient electronic commerce and rights management models that can amortize resource maintenance costs through common usage of the same, or overlapping, resource base.
One or more Distributed Commerce Utility commerce models may share some or all of the resources of one or more other models. One or more models may shift the mix and nature of their distributed administrative operations to adapt to the demands of Cyberspacexe2x80x94a rapidly changing sea of commercial opportunities, relationships, and constraints.
The Distributed Commerce Utility supports the processes of traditional commerce by allowing their translation into electronic commerce processes. The Distributed Commerce Utility further enhances these processes through its use of distributed processing, rights related xe2x80x9cclearinghousexe2x80x9d administration, security designs, object oriented design, administrative smart agents, negotiation and electronic decision making techniques, and/or electronic automation control techniques as may be necessary for efficient, commercially practical electronic commerce models.
Certain Distributed Commerce Utility operations (financial payment, usage auditing, etc.) can be performed within participant user electronic appliance secure execution spaces such as, for example, xe2x80x9cprotected processing environmentsxe2x80x9d disclosed in Ginter et al.
Distributed clearinghouse operations may be performed through xe2x80x9cvirtually networked and/or hierarchicalxe2x80x9d arrays of Commerce Utility System sites employing a general purpose, interoperable (e.g., peer-to-peer) virtual distribution environment foundation.
For a given application or model, differing arrays of Distributed Commerce Utility Services may be authorized to provide differing kinds of administrative and/or support functions.
Any or all of the roles supported by the Distributed Commerce Utility may be performed by, and/or used by, the same organization, consortium or other grouping of organizations, or other electronic community participants, such as individual user web sites.
One or more parts of the Distributed Commerce Utility may be comprised of a network of distributed protected processing environments performing one or more roles having hierarchical and/or peer-to-peer relationships.
Multiple Distributed Commerce Utility protected processing environments may contribute to the overall role of a service, foundation component, and/or clearinghouse.
Distributed protected processing environments contributing to a Distributed Commerce Utility role may be as distributed, in a preferred embodiment, as the number of VDE participant protected processing environments and/or may have specific hierarchical, networked and/or centralized administration and support relationship(s) to such participant protected processing environments.
In a given model, certain one or more Distributed Commerce Utility roles may be fully distributed, certain other one or more roles may be more (e.g., hierarchically), and/or fully, centralized, and certain other roles can be partially distributed and partially centralized.
The fundamental peer-to-peer control capabilities provided by the Distributed Commerce Utility allows for any composition of distributed roles that collectively provide important, practical, scaleable, and/or essential commerce administration, security, and automation services.
Combinations of Distributed Commerce Utility features, arrangements, and/or capabilities can be employed in programmable mixtures of distributed and centralized arrangements, with various of such features, arrangements, and capabilities operating in end-user protected processing environments and/or xe2x80x9cmiddlexe2x80x9d foundation protected processing environments (local, regional, class specific, etc.) and/or centralized service protected processing environments.
The Distributed Commerce Utility is especially useful to support the Internet and other electronic environments that have distributed information creators, users and service providers. By helping people to move their activities into the electronic world, it plays a fundamentally important role in migration of these non-electronic human activities onto the Internet, Intranets, and other electronic interaction networks. Such network users require the Distributed Commerce Utility foundation and support services in order to economically realize their business and privacy requirements. This secure distributed processing foundation is needed to optimally support the capacity of electronic commerce models to meaningfully scale to demand and efficiently handle the full range of desired activities and service volume.
The Distributed Commerce Utility technologies provided by the present inventions provide a set of secure, distributed support and administrative services for electronic commerce, rights management, and distributed computing and process control.
The Distributed Commerce Utility support services including highly secure and sophisticated technical and/or contractual services, may be invoked by electronic commerce and value chain participants in a seamless, convenient, and relatively transparent way that shields users against the underlying complexity of their operation.
The Distributed Commerce Utility can ensure appropriately high levels of physical, computer, network, process and policy-based security and automation while providing enhanced, efficient, reliable, easy to use, convenient functionality that is necessary (or at least highly desirable) for orderly and efficiently supporting of the needs of the electronic community.
The Distributed Commerce Utility, in its preferred embodiments, support the creation of competitive commercial models operating in the context of an xe2x80x9copenxe2x80x9d VDE based digital marketplace.
The Distributed Commerce Utility can provide convenience and operating efficiencies to their value chain participants. For example, they may offer a complete, integrated set of important xe2x80x9cclearingxe2x80x9d function capabilities that are programmable and can be shaped to optimally support multi-party business relationship through one seamless, xe2x80x9cdistributedxe2x80x9d interface (e.g., a distributed application). Clearing and/or support functions and/or sub-functions can, as desirable, be made available individually and/or separately so as to serve business, confidentiality, efficiency, or other objectives.
The Distributed Commerce Utility can make it easy for providers, merchants, distributors, repurposers, consumers, and other value chain participants to attach to, invoke, and work with Distributed Commerce Utility services. Hookups can be easy, seamless and comprehensive (one hook-up may provide a wide variety of complementary services).
The Distributed Commerce Utility can further enhance convenience and efficiency by providing or otherwise supporting consumer brand images for clearing services offered by participant organizations, but utilizing shared infrastructure and processes.
The Distributed Commerce Utility can realize important efficiencies resulting from scale and specialization by participant organizations by supporting xe2x80x9cvirtualxe2x80x9d models that electronically and seamlessly employ the special services and capabilities of multiple parties.
The Distributed Commerce Utility makes it possible for consumers to conveniently receive a benefit such as a service or product, where such service or product results from the invocation of a xe2x80x9cfabricxe2x80x9d of various support servicesxe2x80x94each of which service may be comprised of a distributed fabric of more specialized services and/or participating constituent service providers (the overall fabric is apparent to the value chain participant, the underlying complexity is (or can be) largely or entirely hidden).
Distributed Commerce Utility services and capabilities in their preferred embodiments can employ and be combined in any reasonable manner with any one or more Virtual Distribution Environment capabilities described in Ginter, et. al., including for example:
A. VDE chain of handling and control,
B. secure, trusted internodal communication and interoperability,
C. secure database,
D. authentication,
E. cryptographic,
F. fingerprinting,
G. other VDE security techniques,
H. rights operating system,
I. object design and secure container techniques,
J. container control structures,
K. rights and process control language,
L. electronic negotiation,
M. secure hardware, and
N. smart agent (smart object) techniques (for example, smart agents employed as process control, multi-party, and/or other administrative agent capabilities supporting distributed node administrative integration).
The support and administrative service functions provided by the Distributed Commerce Utility can be combined in various ways and/or distributed through an electronic community, system or network. The preferred embodiment uses the protected processing environment based Virtual Distribution Environment described in Ginter et al. to facilitate such combinations and distributedness. Since all such Virtual Distribution Environment protected processing environments are at least to some degree trusted, every protected processing environment can be a clearinghouse or a part of a clearinghouse. Commerce models acceptable to the interest and desires of VDE commerce node users, can support Distributed Commerce Utility services that are pushed all the way to end-user electronic appliances employing, for example, other VDE protected processing environments, secure communication techniques and other VDE capabilities (as discussed elsewhere VDE capabilities can be directly integrated with the present inventions). Such appliances, along with more centralized value chain nodes can together form combinations that function as virtual clearing protected processing environments. In the end, cyberspace will be populated, in part, by big, xe2x80x9cvirtualxe2x80x9d computers where access to resources is based upon xe2x80x9cavailabilityxe2x80x9d and rights.
The Distributed Commerce Utility is a modular, programmable and generalizable context that it can support such virtual computers. The Distributed Commerce Utility is a unique architectural foundation for the design of electronic commerce value chain models and virtual computers. The programmable nature of a particular implementation can support differing actual (logical and/or physical), and/or degrees of, distribution for the same and/or similar services For example:
Centralized Commerce Utility Systems and services may be used to provide certain support service functions, or collections of functions, efficiently from a centralized location.
Other Commerce Utility Systems might be provided in a partially or wholly distributed manner.
Some support and administrative service functions might be distributed in and/or throughout existing or new communications infrastructure or other electronic network support components.
Other support services might operate within secure execution spaces (e.g., protected processing environments) on any or all user electronic appliances, using peer-to-peer communications and interactions, for example, to provide a secure web of support service fabric.
Other support services might operate both in the network support infrastructure and at user electronic appliances.
Such distributed support services may complement (and/or eliminate the need for) more centralized support service installations. Different combinations of the same and/or differing, non-distributed and differently distributed services may be provided to support different activities. Moreover, the nature and distribution of services for one overall model may differ from one implementation to another. Such differing model implementations can, if desired, share both the same Commerce Utility Systems and Services and/or any particular and/or any combination of Distributed Commerce Utility administrative and/or support functions.
Further, a particular Commerce Utility Systems and Service infrastructure may be used by differing value chains (e.g., business model or relationship set) in differing manners. For example, certain value chains may elect to keep certain support service functions more centralized for efficiency, security, control or other reasons, others may elect more and/or differently distributed models.
Provided that, for example, payment methods and rightsholders and/or other value chain participants concur, any one or more of the Distributed Commerce Utility secure infrastructure support services may distribute and/or delegate a portion or all of their functions and authority to any arbitrary collection or set of end-user and/or other value chain electronic appliances. Distributing and delegating these services and functions has various advantages including, for example, enabling flexible and efficient creation of temporary, ad hoc webs of secure electronic commerce in which any, a number, or all appliance(s) in the collection or set may participate as at least a partial (if not full) peer of other appliances in the same commerce web fabric.
The present invention provides the following non-exhaustive list of additional features relating to distributing administrative and support functions:
Any mixture of any administrative and/or support functions may be integrated with any other mixture of administrative and/or support functions.
Any set or subset of Commerce Utility System functions can be combined in an integrated design with any other mixture of Commerce Utility system functions. Such mixtures can be distributed to any desired degree and any one or more portions of the mixture may be more or less distributed than any other one or more portion. This allows a value chain to employ optimum desired and/or practical designs. Any mixture, including any degrees of distribution, of rights clearing, financial clearing, usage aggregation, usage reporting and/or other clearing and/or other Distributed Commerce Utility functions, can be provided. Such Distributed Commerce Utility functions and/or administrative and/or support services can be combined with any other desired Distributed Commerce Utility functions and/or administrative and/or support services.
Any one or more such administrative and/or support services and/or functions can operate as a Commerce Utility System and support a web of Commerce Utility System nodes, each of which supports at least a portion of such Commerce Utility administrative service activities. Each Commerce Utility System may be capable of granting authority and/or providing services to and/or otherwise securely interoperating with other Commerce Utility Systems and/or nodes.
Each Commerce Utility System (or combination of Commerce Utility Systems) may be capable of participating as a xe2x80x9cvirtual clearinghousexe2x80x9d comprised of plural Commerce Utility Systems. In the preferred embodiment, these xe2x80x9cvirtual clearinghousesxe2x80x9d may, when in accordance with VDE rules and controls, interoperatexe2x80x94in a fashion prescribed by such rules and controlsxe2x80x94with other Commerce Utility Systems and/or other virtual clearinghouses participating in the same web. Such xe2x80x9cvirtual clearinghousesxe2x80x9d may receive authority from secure chain of handling and control embodied in electronic control sets, and may participate in electronic commerce process automation resulting from such chain of handling and control and other VDE capabilities.
This ability to distribute, and, if desired to subsequently adapt (modify), any support service functions to any desired degree across a system or network provides great power, flexibility and increases in efficiency. For example, distributing aspects of support services such as clearing functions will help avoid the xe2x80x9cbottlenecksxe2x80x9d that a centralized clearing facility would create if it had insufficient capacity to handle the processing loads. Taking advantage of the distributed processing power of many value chain participant appliances also has great benefits in terms of improved effectiveness and system response time, much lower overhead of operation, greater fault tolerance, versatility in application implementations, and, in general much greater value chain appeal resulting from the present inventions adaptability to each value chain participant""s needs and requirements.
The Distributed Commerce Utility may be organized into a number of different, special and/or general purpose xe2x80x9cCommerce Utility Systems.xe2x80x9d The Commerce Utility Systems can be centralized, distributed, or partially distributed and partially centralized to provide administrative, security, and other services that practical commerce management layer requires. Certain Commerce Utility Systems comprise Distributed Commerce Utility implementations of certain well known administrative service functions, such as financial clearinghouse and certifying authorities. Other Commerce Utility Systems involve new forms of services and new combinations and designs for well known service activities. A Commerce Utility System is any instanstiation of the Distributed Commerce Utility supporting a specific electronic commerce model, and a Commerce Utility System may itself be comprised of constituent Commerce Utility Systems. Commerce Utility Systems may include any or all of the following, in any combination of capabilities and distribution designs, for example:
financial clearinghouses,
usage clearinghouses,
rights and permissions clearinghouses,
certifying authorities,
secure directory services,
secure transaction authorities,
multi-purpose, general purpose and/or combination Commerce Utility Systems including any combination of the capabilities of the systems listed immediately above, and
other Commerce Utility Systems.
These Commerce Utility Systems are far-reaching in their utility and applicability. For example they may provide administrative support for any or all of the following:
trusted electronic event management,
networked, automated, distributed, secure process administration and control,
Virtual Distribution Environment chain-of-handling and control, and
rights administration and usage (e.g., event) management (e.g., auditing, control, rights fulfillment, etc.), across and/or within electronic networks, including xe2x80x9cunconnected,xe2x80x9d virtually connected, or periodically connected networks.
The Commerce Utility Systems may govern electronic process chains and electronic event consequences related to, for example:
electronic advertising,
market and usage analysis,
electronic currency,
financial transaction clearing and communications,
manufacturing and other distributed process control models,
financial clearing,
enabling payment fulfillment or provision of other consideration (including service fees, product fees or any other fees and/or charges) based at least in part on content, process control (event) and/or rights management,
performing audit, billing, payment fulfillment (or provision of other consideration) and/or other clearing activities,
compiling, aggregating, using and/or providing information relating to use of one or more secure containers and/or content and/or processes (events), including contents of secure containers and/or any other content,
providing information based upon usage auditing, user profiling, and/or market surveying related to use of one or more secure containers and/or content and/or processes (events),
employing information derived from user exposure to content (including advertising) and/or use of processes (events),
providing object registry services; and/or rights, permissions, prices, and/or other rules and controls information; for registered and/or registering objects;
electronically certifying information used with and/or required by rules and controls, such as authenticating identity, class membership and/or other attributes of identity context including for example, certification of class identity for automating processes, such as rights related financial transaction fulfillment based upon governing jurisdiction (taxation(s)), employment and/or other group membership including, for example, acquired class rights (e.g., purchased discount buyers club membership);
third party archiving and/or authenticating of transactions and/or transaction information for secure backup and non-repudiation,
providing programmed mixed arrays of Commerce Utility System process control and automation services, where different Commerce Utility Systems support different value chains and/or business models requirements, and where such Commerce Utility Systems further support distributed, scaleable, efficient networked and/or hierarchical fixed and/or virtual clearinghouse models which employ secure communication among a Commerce Utility System""s distributed clearinghouse protected processing environments for passing clearinghouse related rules and controls and derived, summarized, and/or detailed transaction information,
EDI, electronic trading models, and distributed computing arrangements where participants require trusted foundation that enables efficient, distributed administration, automation, and control of transaction value chains, and
other support and/or administrative services and/or functions.